The internet is full of unusual covers of Nintendo songs, but none caught our eye quite like this Ballad of the Goddess harp duet by identical twins Camille and Kennerly, aka The Harp Twins. We talked to the musical duo about gaming, music and sticking together.

Nintendo Life: Hi guys, thanks for agreeing to this interview! First of all, please tell us a little about yourselves.

Camille and Kennerly: Well first of all, this is the first interview we have agreed to for a gaming site, so thank you for having us! We are professional duet harpists and actresses. We perform internationally as a harp duo on both acoustic and electric harps. We’re trained classically with degrees in harp performance, but playing rock, pop, and contemporary music is our true musical passion. Since we can’t find harp duets of the type of music we like to play we arrange all of our own music!

NL: How long have you been playing music and when did you turn professional?

C&K: We started playing piano when we were children. We began harp after we’d been playing piano for about 6 years and immediately fell in love with the instrument. We decided to attend a Conservatory of Music for our University (college) majoring in harp performance. We began to perform professionally while we were in college (university) even though it was quite hectic with our Conservatory studies!

Did we mention they dress up?

NL: Why did you choose the harp over other instruments?

C&K: We were always drawn to the harp. It seemed like a sort of magical instrument to us. Convincing our parents to let us study harp was the difficult part! Our first harp was shared between us and “pre-owned.” But we wanted to play together and not just “share” so we managed to get a second harp.

NL: Your website mentions you're “the world's only known identical twin professional harpists” — quite an accolade! How important is it that you perform together? Do you ever do solo work or do you strictly come as a pair?

C&K: Thank you so much! We absolutely love playing harp together as a duo. We knew immediately after starting harp lessons that we wanted to play duets. The majority of the music we were assigned while studying harp was solo music, but we spent our spare time arranging and playing duets! We felt most alive and inspired when we were playing together. We now arrange all of our own music for harp duet and perform exclusively as a duo. Harp is our musical passion and being able to make music with our best friend is an amazing blessing!

Giant harps...

NL: As well as harp covers of pop and rock songs you've also covered Ballad of the Goddess from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Why did you choose this piece out of all the Zelda music?

C&K: Like the whole Zelda series, Skyward Sword has epic music! We found it so inspiring that Zelda SS utilizes a harp as its magical instrument! When we heard “Ballad of the Goddess” for the first time, we fell in love with the stunning melodic line! It is always challenging to arrange an orchestral piece for only two harps, especially without using a backtrack to fill in around us, but we were up for the challenge!

NL: Are you big gamers in your spare time? What are some of your favourite gaming series?

C&K: We have to admit that unfortunately our rehearsal, performance, and travel schedule doesn’t allow us time for much gaming. However, we are HUGE fans of video game music! We love that gaming music rivals movie soundtracks! There are so many gaming series that have amazing scores! Often we will have songs from gaming soundtracks (Zelda: SS and Final Fantasy VII are two of our current favourites) on repeat while we are working on business!

NL: When you play games together, who normally wins? Do you both play fair or is one of you a “win at all costs” kind of girl?

C&K: We pretty much universally have the same skill level in anything we attempt! However, playing against each other always seems counterintuitive since we’re inherently a “team”. We would almost prefer that the other did better than ourselves! But rather than hold back we always spur each other on in everything we do.

NL: What Nintendo gaming memories do you have from growing up together?

... and smaller, "mini harps"

C&K: We were more the playing-with-Barbie type girls!

NL: Which other gaming songs do you have plans to perform?

C&K: We have arranged several songs from other video games! We are currently working on videos for those, but we are keeping the song choices a surprise!

C&K: We want to say a special THANK YOU to the gaming community for all the love and wonderful feedback! You have inspired and encouraged us to keep doing what we love – arrange and perform on our “magic” harps.

For those of you who enjoyed our Zelda arrangement, we have 31 videos on our YouTube channel. We would also love to connect with Nintendo Life readers on our Facebook and Twitter! Visit any time for behind the scenes, sneak peeks, and bonuses!

Unfortunately, YouTube does not allow us to respond to all the mail we receive. However, if you write or post to us at either Facebook or Twitter we will respond!

Camille and Kennerly also recorded a cheeky message just for you lucky Nintendo Life readers!